Women in Islam

Woman, in Islam, was created
by God to be man's partner. The Creator built into both man and woman a mutual
correspondence so that each would find contentment in the other. The Qur'an
calls man and woman a "garment" for each other, signifying their
reciprocal closeness to each other (what is physically and continuously closer
to oneself than one's clothing?), their mutual interdependence. As far as
religious duties are concerned, Islam made the sexes absolutely equal. It
has exempted women from these duties when they are menstruating, pregnant,
or recovering from childbirth.

Unlike most other societies
of the time, Islam, from its beginning, recognized women as autonomous legal
personalities with civil rights. As a complete legal person the adult Muslim
woman is granted title to keep her name forever. She has the right to acquire,
keep, and sell property as she pleases in perfect freedom. Her consent must
be obtained for any transaction involving her, be it the lease of her property,
the cultivation of her field, or, above all, her marriage. She cannot be
coerced into anything. Unless she is a minor, and hence dependent upon her
parents or guardians, or unless she has appointed another person to be her
attorney-at-law or representative, she must exercise her rights in person
in order to make a transaction legally valid.

Woman, in Islam, is not
considered the source of evil. In Islamic belief she did not tempt Adam;
nor did the devil or death, whether physical or moral, come into the world
through her. The Qur'an tells that God had prohibited Adam and Eve from touching
a certain tree and that they disobeyed and had to be expelled from Paradise.
It does not say that the act of disobedience was sexual; nor did it have
anything to do with the "tree of knowledge.

"Furthermore, the
Qur'an adds that the disobedient act was repented and that God forgave its
perpetrators. Evidently, the guilt was purely that of disobedience. The Qur'an
even explains the act as the result of human forgetfulness (Qur'an 20:115)
which Islam regards as punishable because of the tremendous importance it
lays on moral responsibility. Hence, there is no "fall" in Islam,
and no resultant "original sin" in any form. Woman, therefore,
is innocent. She is a positive good, a consoler, a source of happiness and
fulfillment to man, as man is to her.

Male-female relations have
to be ordered and governed if the ethical demand of responsibility is to
be met. To this end, Islam provided a whole system of laws governing those
relations, for it believes that man-woman affairs cannot be left to the whimsy
of the moment nor to the arrangements of others. Marriage itself, as an institution,
is regarded by Islam as a solemn compliance with the ethical requisite of
responsibility. In condemning sexual acts outside of marriage as punishable
crimes, Islam does so not because sex is evil in itself but because it has
been engaged in irresponsibly.

Islam considers that in
male-female relations there is a physical side and an emotional side, as
well as a spiritual side. Further, it maintains that adultery is a fulfillment
of the physical side, and that it is often entered into at the cost of the
long-run emotional side, and always at the cost of the spiritual. For in
adultery one partner is always using the other, or allowing himself or herself
to be used, as an object. Where one partner has proper regard for the other,
surely he or she should be willing to transform the relationship into marriage.
Marriage in Islam is not a sacrament but rather a civil contract by which
the partners freely proclaim their plan to regard each other henceforth as
ends, and not as means.